"In all of living have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured!"~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

A Tale of Two Non-Trick-or-Treaters

Last year Halloween was pretty lame. We didn't even have costumes. We were too busy with work and school and life and dance rehearsals to make them (although we did shop for supplies to be 7 of 9 and the borg from Star Trek...they're still in a box somewhere). I went to a mini Halloween game night with some friends a day or two before Halloween, but Trevor was too busy to come so I went alone. We were too busy to go to the Halloween party at our church too, and we didn't carve pumpkins because - you guessed it - we didn't have time. We didn't even pass out candy or anything since we lived in my grandparents' basement and didn't have our own door. Actually, if I'm remembering correctly, Trevor had to work from 4 pm Halloween night until 4 am November 1st, so I spent Halloween night bored and alone in the basement watching dumb random old Halloweenish movies on Netflix that were just really poorly-made and not even worth watching, until I eventually fell asleep. I did get to go to the BYU Social Dance Lab for a bit that night (and Trevor came for a bit too during his break from work) and see some old BYU friends and new dance friends and my cousin, so that was fun, and I got to wear some old costumes from years past to work, but that was about as festive as it got.

We made it work, but overall, super lame for Halloween!!!

This year was much better :)

I wanted to do a fun couples costume with Trevor, and I also wanted to do something fun to incorporate my nice little pregnant belly - which actually feels HUGE, but everyone keeps telling me it's tiny. All the pregnant costume ideas I could find were really overdone though. Bun in the oven, wear overalls and paint a pumpkin or watermelon over your belly, be a cheerleader or athlete and paint a basketball on your belly, put blood and doll limbs on your belly so it looks like the baby is sticking out, paint a beach ball on your belly, etc. Not that those are bad ideas or anything, but I wanted to do something more fun and original than that! I also wanted to do something super comfy since being pregnant is definitely NOT comfy.

Then one day, I found this idea on Pinterest, and I knew I struck gold!

Vector from Despicable Me! It's perfect! Super duper comfy (according to the girls in the movie, they're pajamas!), definitely not overdone (yet), easy to do as a couples costume, and he's got that big round belly that goes perfectly with being pregnant! Check out her blog post (linked here) to see the rest of her awesome pictures! Her whole family got dressed up as Despicable Me characters, and they are seriously so cute!!

My version of the costume wasn't nearly as elaborate as hers, but considering I only spent a whopping 2 hours or so making it, and only about $20, I'm pretty proud of myself! Plus now I have a nice big comfy "warm-up suit" to lounge around in for the rest of my pregnancy since most of my maternity clothes are too small now and/or are Summer clothes. And comfort is definitely trumping fashion these days! (I am so cool...)

Instead of making everything from scratch like she did, I decided to look for some cheap orange clothes to use. After scouring several stores and thrift shops, I finally found the perfect orange pants at Walmart for $7, and I happened to find an orange shirt there too that matched perfectly for $5! The only problem? The shirt wasn't maternity and fit awkwardly, and the pants were actually leggings and they only came in size XXXXL. No joke. Yes, I've gained a lot of weight with this pregnancy, but not that much!

(I was having a sick day and wasn't wearing makeup when Trevor took this photo, so I told him to crop me out :)

So, after I found the perfect - yet not-so-perfect - orange outfit, I surged up the inside of the shirt sleeves to make them fit better, and used a pair of yoga pants as a pattern to make the pants waaaaay smaller! And then I added some iron-on adhesive up the outside seams on the legs and sleeves to attach some white ribbon ($2 for the whole spool and I have a ton left).

I got some glasses at the Dollar Tree, and ordered this wig from Amazon.com for about $5 (free shipping!). It's obviously more of a flapper wig than a bowl-cut guy wig like Vector's hair, but I didn't want to have to worry about cutting it. Plus I'm a girl and it's my costume...so I can be a girl Vector if I want :) And I figure the wig will come in handy for a future costume someday.

Trevor wanted in on the fun, and made a Dr. Nefario costume, complete with a fart-blaster gun that he designed, painted, assembled, and soldered all by himself :) He also spray-painted his goggles black right before the party and stained his face and hair pretty bad from putting them on while they were still wet. Gotta love that guy :) We wore our costumes to a super fun Minute-to-win-it Halloween party that our friends threw and it was great!

And we got to wear them again to the chili and cornbread cook-off, and trunk-or-treat at our church the night before Halloween.

On Halloween night we had a few errands to run after Trevor got home from work, and we didn't want to miss out on the trick-or-treaters! So we decided to forgo taking the time to change into costume for a third time this year and get right to the candy action!

We turned on a Halloween party playlist and brought chairs out on our porch, as well as a little portable table. We set up one of those bug-repelling candles, got some corndogs from Sonic (on sale for $0.50 on Halloween!!), baked up some onion rings, and read Scarlett (the sequel to Cinder) out loud to each other as we ate our romantic candle-lit out-door dinner between trick-or-treaters.